Man blames ‘spir­i­tual pow­ers’ for swal­low­ing 40 knives

NEW DELHI — An In­dian po­lice­man who spent two months swal­low­ing knives and had 40 of them sur­gi­cally re­moved said yes­ter­day that “spir­i­tual pow­ers” made him do it.

The fa­ther of two un­der­went a suc­cess­ful five-hour op­er­a­tion to re­move the knives from his stom­ach in the north­ern city of Am­rit­sar af­ter com­plain­ing to doc­tors of se­vere ab­domen pain.

“I don’t know why I did it but there was some spir­i­tual power be­hind it,” the 42-year-old told AFP from Am­rit­sar in Pun­jab state, de­clin­ing to be named. “It started in June when I swal­lowed the first knife and I en­joyed the feel­ing. It soon be­came a habit,” he said.

Doc­tors said they ini­tially thought he was suf­fer­ing from a tu­mour af­ter body scans showed a large solid mass. But on fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion, they dis­cov­ered dozens of fold­ing knives with metal and wooden han­dles and mea­sur­ing up to 18cm un­folded.

“We im­me­di­ately pre­pared him for surgery and re­moved the knives. There was bleed­ing as some of them were un­folded,” Ra­jin­der Ra­jan, one of the sur­geons at Cor­po­rate Hospi­tal, told AFP.

Ra­jan said he sus­pected the pa­tient, who told doc­tors he passed two more knives in his stools, was suf­fer­ing from de­pres­sion.

Although re­cov­er­ing well from Fri­day’s surgery, he would un­dergo a psy­cho­log­i­cal as­sess­ment be­fore be­ing dis­charged from the hospi­tal, Ra­jan said.

Doc­tors were not rul­ing out the pos­si­bil­ity that he had pica dis­or­der in which the suf­ferer feels com­pelled to con­sume non-edi­ble things. But the man said he would not do it again. “I con­sumed a knife a day for about two months. I never felt it was go­ing to harm me but when it pained, I came to the hospi­tal.

“I will not re­peat it. I am glad they saved my life and I want to go back to my fam­ily.” — AFP.